Research

Demand Forecasting for Rural Transit

Demand forecasting for rural transit is a tool that will aid rural planners and analysts in the allocation of scarce resources for this typically underserved population. Three Washington models are based on the characteristics of usage for several regional transportation systems currently in place in nonmetropolitan areas in Washington State. The first model, Total Transit Demand-All (TTD-ALL) uses average values for ridership by population subgroup from four regional systems in Washington to predict ridership for other areas. A second model, Total Transit Demand-FARE (TTD-FARE) uses the same approach as the first but excludes the fare-free regional transportation system which has markedly different characteristics from the systems with fares. A third, more in-depth model, Disaggregated Transit Demand (DTD), was developed using a separate equation for each population subgroup. Ridership behavior estimates were obtained from random sample telephone surveys in two of the regions used in this study. Model results show significant regional variation in ridership by population subgroup.